"
"But suppose he should ever learn the truth?" murmured Vance.
She caught her breath.
"That would be ruinous, of course. But he'll never learn. Only you and I
know."
"A very hard blow, eh," said Vance, "if he were robbed of the Colby
illusion and had Black Jack put in its place as a cold fact? But of
course we'll never tell him."
Her color was never high. Now it became gray. Only her eyes remained
burning, vivid, young, blazing out through the mask of age.
"Remember you said his blood would tell before he was twenty-five; that
the blood of Black Jack would come to the surface; that he would have
shot a man?"
"Still harping on that, Elizabeth? What if he does?"
"I'd disown him, throw him out penniless on the world, never see him
again."
"You're a Spartan," said her brother in awe, as he looked on that thin,
stern face. "Terry is your theory. If he disappoints you, he'll be simply
a theory gone wrong. You'll cut him out of your life as if he were an
algebraic equation and never think of him again."
"But he's not going wrong, Vance. Because, in ten days, he'll be twenty-
five! And that's what all these changes mean.
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